Gemu Ray

I seem to accumulate family wherever I go. This has the wonderful effect of always belonging, but the harder effect of always being away from people you love.

In my recent trip to Gulf Province to start connecting there, I was adopted into a Kope family, the Aumaries. Although Aumarie himself is dead, I have a mama and plenty of brothers, sisters and kids to belong to. They look after me, giving me a place, identity and responsibilities, and I reciprocate that care.

It’s going to take me awhile to learn who my family is and how to best relate to them, as I have well over a dozen village-siblings and I’m still learning about the responsibilities of PNG relationships. There are also lots of first cousins who classify as siblings. Add in generational complexities and in-family adoptions, and I have an enormous number of family.  Still, it is good to belong.

My new family are all over PNG, working and studying in various roles and places. I doubt I’ll ever meet some of them, but we are still part of the same family.

Part of being adopted into the family was that I was given a village name, Gemu. This is the same village name as one of my sisters, a teacher in Goroka that I’ve not met. At the same time, people were struggling with the ‘sch’ at the start of my name, as it is not said like the ‘sch’ at the start of school. An easy solution to this is to use my father’s name for my surname, as everyone else does. All of a sudden, I had a totally new name: Gemu Ray.

It might take me awhile to remember to answer to that!

With my Mama, sister, niece, two sister-in-law and nephew.
I mentioned complex generations… the two babies in this photo are related
because the great-grandma of one is the sister to the father of the other!